An alarming number of people have access to a 401(k) and are either not using it, not getting the full employer match, or not making the simple moves that turn a good account into a great one. Joe and OG dedicate a full episode to the retirement account that most people take for granted — covering contributions, matching, investment selection, Roth versus traditional, and the specific decisions that separate people who retire comfortably from people who almost got there. Plus wins from the Stacker community and trivia that will make you the most dangerous person at your next dinner party.
What You’ll Walk Away With
- Why the employer match is the single highest guaranteed return available to any investor — and the specific contribution level that captures every dollar of it
- Roth 401(k) versus traditional 401(k): the one question that cuts through all the noise and tells you which one to use right now
- Why your investment menu feels overwhelming and how to make a great choice in under five minutes using one simple filter
- The auto-escalation feature most people never turn on — and why setting it up once can add tens of thousands of dollars to your balance without you doing anything else
- What to do with your 401(k) when you leave a job: the four options, which one is almost always wrong, and which one most people choose anyway
- Why contribution limits are higher than most people think — and the catch-up contribution that becomes available at 50 that most people in their 40s don’t know to plan for
- The vesting schedule trap: why your employer match might not actually be yours yet — and what that means for anyone thinking about leaving their job
- Why 403(b) and 457 plans follow most of the same rules — and the one unique advantage the 457 has that almost nobody knows about
- OG on the single most common 401(k) mistake he sees in client portfolios — and how long it typically takes to fix
- Stacker wins from the community: the specific moves people made this month that are already paying off
Why This Matters Now
Every year you don’t optimize your 401(k) is a year of compounding you don’t get back. The moves in this episode are not complicated — but most people either don’t know about them or keep putting them off. This is the episode to send to anyone who has a 401(k) and has never really looked at it.
From the Basement
Joe and OG celebrate the 401(k) in mom’s basement while OG recovers from completing the Triple Bypass — a Colorado cycling event that covers three mountain passes and approximately all of the elevation gain in the western hemisphere. OG’s wife asked if he’d do it again. He answered with a childbirth analogy. Doug arrives with trivia that will be re-shared all week. The community delivers wins that prove the system works.
Resources Mentioned
Stacking Benjamins Community — stackingbenjamins.com/basement
Stacking Benjamins Basics Guide — stackingbenjamins.com/basicsguide
Stacking Benjamins Field Kit — stackingbenjamins.com/fieldkit
Stacking Benjamins BAD Groups — stackingbenjamins.com/bad
Stacking Benjamins Newsletter (The 201) — stackingbenjamins.com/201
OG financial planning calendar — stackingbenjamins.com/og
Our Headline
- Workers say the 401(k) is no longer enough to win them over (InvestmentNews)
Doug’s Trivia
- What was the name of the lunar module that landed on the Moon?
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Other Mentions
Join Us Wednesday
Tune in on Wednesday when we’re joined by Superbowl champion and top podcaster on leadership, Ryan Hawk, who joins us to discuss how to be a leader
Written by: Kevin Bailey
Miss our last show? Listen here: Who Should You Trust With Your Money? (Friends, Family, Experts, AI, and Bad Advice) SB1869 | Stacking Benjamins
Episode transcript
[00:00:00] Joe: It’s Monday, and it’s a special day in the basement because we are going to be celebrating your 401. And I know what money geeks we are here, like how excited you are. Mom is making a cake. Doug is all-
[00:00:16] Doug: There- โฆ
[00:00:17] Joe: so excited There’s
[00:00:18] Doug: probably people driving their car right now that just blacked out from excitement.
[00:00:23] Joe: 401s, are you kidding me? I don’t know how I drove off the road. How did I drive off a road? Like when I- Sorry, officer โฆ 403, we’re talking to you, too. 457, I know, I know it’s that. But you know what we’re talking about first? We’re talking about those people that kept us safe all weekend while we were playing.
[00:00:40] Joe: Well, some of us were. Doug, you and I were playing. We’ll get into what, uh, OG was doing here in a moment. But I think it’s time that we raise our mugs, ’cause on Mondays we salute those people. On behalf of the men and women s- stacking Benjamins in mom’s basement, and the men and women stacking Benjamins around the world, here’s to our troops.
[00:01:00] Joe: Thank you so much, all those people serving us, helping us, keeping us safe. Let’s all go stack some Benjamins together now.
[00:01:09] Doug: Thanks, everybody. Cheers. You’re gonna
[00:01:13] opener: end up eating a steady diet of government cheese and living in a van down by the river
[00:01:26] Doug: Live from Joe’s mom’s basement, it’s The Stacking Benjamins Show
[00:01:40] Doug: I’m Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Doug, and want a big raise? Here’s an easy way to give yourself one. Learn to use your 401retirement plan better. On today’s episode, we’ll share tactics to make the most out of a tool an alarming number of people take for granted. Plus, we’ll share some big wins from our Stacker community, and I’ll serve up some of my mind-bending money trivia.
[00:02:06] Doug: You’ll be re-sharing it with your friends all week. And now, here come two guys, one who just finished a donut, and the other who just rode his bike all the way through a triple bypass. Wait, what? It’s Joe and oh, G-G-G-G-G.
[00:02:28] Joe: Hey there, Stackers. That’s right, nothing like a good donut on a Monday morning. And we are like the deliciousness of, uh, financial donuts. I don’tโฆ I, I can’t, I can’t make that work. I’m working, Doug. I’m trying to work it. How are you, man? Abort, abort.
[00:02:50] Joe: We’ll fix it in post, or not. We might let that one go. How are you?
[00:02:55] Doug: So happy. Just joyful to be here. I wanna hear about this, uh, this thing that OG did, uh, as a little side quest.
[00:03:05] Joe: Well, yes, because- He- โฆ you, y- you and I did the same stuff we normally do. Right. And we felt pretty good about ourselves until we found out what our counterpart here did.
[00:03:15] Joe: Uh, triple bypass. Not what you think it is. This is the, uh, the, the different triple bypass. If you think about the passes between mountains up and over mountains, triple. Doug, he didn’t go over one mountain- He didn’t even go over two mountains
[00:03:32] Doug: Well, I don’t think you’re understanding it correctly ’cause it, they bypassed the mountains.
[00:03:37] Doug: I think he just rode out in the eastern plains- In the plains โฆ of Colorado. They went around the mountains. Yeah. They avoided the difficult parts. I think that’s what this ride was.
[00:03:47] Joe: Yeah. A big, a big congratulations to you, OG, man. What a- Thank you โฆ whatโฆ Do hard things, my friend. And you did something that, uh, I’m very envious of, and it was, uh, fun tracking your progress, buddy.
[00:03:59] OG: Yeah, it was cool. It was all it was cracked up to be. My wife said on Saturday after we got done, she said, “You know, you look to be in good spirits. Um, do you think you’re gonna do this again?” And I said, “Well, I’ll give you an example. Remember when we had babies, and you had just delivered one, and I was like, ‘Well, that looked like fun.
[00:04:18] OG: I, I like that whole process. Maybe we should do that again,’ and you wanted to punch me in the face?” “And you said, ‘Hey, let’s just let this little thing grow for a little while before we start talking about, you know, entertaining another one?'” Yeah, that’s kinda the same feeling.
[00:04:32] Doug: At any point during your ride, OG, did you scream out, “You did this to me!”
[00:04:38] OG: No. No, I was in good spirits- “You’re never touching me again!” โฆ most of the way. I, uh, I felt pretty well-trained. I knew what to expect, and I knew it was gonna suck. I, I, I underestimated the amount of suck in the middle section. Uh, that was a profound amount of suck. That was, that was more suck than I’m used to.
[00:04:55] OG: Way more. Um, but, um- We
[00:04:59] Joe: had these, we had these T-shirts, OG, when I was at The Citadel. You know, they had these illegal contraband T-shirts upperclassmen would sell, and my favorite one said, “The Citadel: A great place to be from, but a horrible place to be.” I feel like it’s the same with the Triple Bypass.
[00:05:12] Joe: Like, there were times when it was a horrible place to be, but now that it’s over, a great place to be from.
[00:05:19] OG: There, there’s some grindy spots in there that are a little, make you question your sanity for a little bit, but, um-
[00:05:26] Joe: Total elevation gain going over three mountains, what’s the total elevation gain?
[00:05:30] OG: Um, it was just under 11,000 feet.
[00:05:33] Joe: Oh, is that all? Oh.
[00:05:34] OG: Yeah.
[00:05:34] Joe: I, I thought it was hard, Doug. I thought this was-
[00:05:37] Doug: Let’s
[00:05:37] Joe: do it next year, Joe โฆ difficult.
[00:05:38] OG: It’s the down part that’s easy.
[00:05:41] Joe: Well, the rest of this is downhill ’cause we got a great show today. I read a piece on Investment News that made me go, w- w- wait a minute, I think people are undervaluing the 401plan.
[00:05:53] Joe: Doug, you even mentioned as we were prepping for today’s episode that on our great Friday round table, that, uh- That was a good one โฆ Roger, yeah, Roger Whitney participated in. I, uh, I said, “Should you always use your 401?” And Doug, he said-
[00:06:08] Doug: No โฆ “
[00:06:09] Joe: No, you should not always use your 401.” And while we- I- โฆ may agree with that, I think, uh, if you’re gonna use the 401, let’s use it right.
[00:06:17] Doug: Yeah, for sure. And, I mean, the, the reason he said no was, for those of you who haven’t listened to the episode, go back and listen to this previous Friday’s episode, ’cause it was a really good one. But it, it’s the always part that he was, you knowโฆ Joe gave him a very binary, kinda black or white, and of course most of the answers to that are, well, not always.
[00:06:38] Doug: There’s probably some rare circumstances where you don’t. But for the vast majority of people, there’s some really good stuff in there and, and, uh, I’m glad to hear that we’re gonna dive in today.
[00:06:47] Joe: Yeah, there’s some rare circumstances where I might say yes to going up three mountains, but generally-
[00:06:51] Joe: there’s this gray area of no-ish
[00:06:56] Doug: that, that- There’s some edge cases- โฆ where maybe we don’t get on the bike.
[00:07:00] Joe: Yeah. Let’s say that I’ve been on, on some serious, serious, uh, drugs, and, and I’m hallucinating. I might under those conditions sign the document to say yes, but nah.
[00:07:12] Doug: And you,
[00:07:12] Joe: and
[00:07:12] Doug: you forget that you have hemorrhoids?
[00:07:15] Joe: That’s, yeah. Well, we haveโฆ
[00:07:19] Joe: How do you transition from hemorrhoids? I don’t know. We are going to dive into that in just a moment. We have a couple sponsors who help us keep on keeping on. In the middle of our shows, we try to keep the sponsor spots light. They’re obviously something that we need to have if we’re gonna keep going.
[00:07:34] Joe: So we’re gonna have a couple now, and then we have a couple as you’re trying to figure out Doug’s trivia, which Doug, I know you’ve got a great one for today on tap. So we’re gonna hear from them. And really, even before we get into sponsors, I gotta tell you what we’ve been doing in the basement. A big change to something that long-time Stackers have heard of called the Vault.
[00:07:52] Joe: Isn’t called the Vault anymore, it’s the Field Kit, and you can use our Swiss Army knife tool at stackingbenjamins.com/fieldkit. Go look at all the different things it does. Its job is to help you do things like the triple bypass or eat a donut or whatever you decide to do on a Tuesday. Is,
[00:08:09] Doug: is it the version that has the corkscrew on it that helps you open your wine?
[00:08:13] Joe: Wouldn’t that be great, too? That, I think it’s the one thing it doesn’t do. But it does so many other things. Or the little toothpick
[00:08:18] Doug: that you always lose?
[00:08:20] Joe: Stackingbenjamins.com/fieldkit gets you there. Uh, let’s hear from our sponsors now, and then we’re diving into the 401.
[00:08:30] headlines: Hello, darlings. And now it’s time for your favorite part of the show, our Stacking Benjamins headlines
[00:08:36] Joe: Before the break I said dive into the 401and 457 people, 403people, this applies to you as well.
[00:08:43] Joe: You know, I was reading this investment news piece just a couple days ago, OG, and I came across this story that made me realize that we’ve probably been asking the f- the wrong question about these retirement place plans. Reporter Emil Halasz wrote about how workers, you know, they’re looking at, at their compensation, and they really want benefits And if you just have, “Yeah, I’m gonna pay you X, and I’m gonna give you the 401,” people are going, “No, no, no, no, no, I want you to come across with more.”
[00:09:16] Joe: And I thought, okay, well, good for them to negotiate for more benefits. However, this idea that I flippantly go, “Eh, 401, eh, whatever, everybody’s got it.” The number of times that I’ve seen people, OG, not use the 401as well as they can was so frequent when I was an advisor. And I haven’t been an advisor for a while, but you’re, you see 401s still all the time.
[00:09:38] Joe: Is there a lot of room for our stackers to improve in how they use their 401?
[00:09:43] OG: I think it just depends on the definition of improve. I mean, I, I certainly don’t see a lot of people who are not investing in their 401, if I said that correctly. There’s, that seems pretty rare, you know, if that’s an offering, that people are not taking advantage of.
[00:09:57] OG: Unless it’s a, unless it’s a decision they’re doing affirmatively, right? Like, “Right now I’m gonna focus on paying off my student loans,” and then, you know, we can talk about the reasons why that might be a good idea or a bad idea. But I feel like it’s pretty rare these days to see somebody who’s not doing it.
[00:10:13] OG: The opportunities to improve it, I think, are in the eye of the beholder, but there are some things, I think generally speaking, that one could do to make their life easier around their retirement plan.
[00:10:23] Joe: Yeah. We’re gonna dive into that, ’cause I do wanna see if there’s ways that any of our stackers, from people just starting out on their journey to people that, uh, have been doing this for a long time, might be able to tweak.
[00:10:35] Joe: The big thing, though, is I introduced this initially, OG, as part of the compensation package, and I think this is an aha. The pe- you know, people think that there’s the four food groups and then there’s ice cream, and somehow the, the 401or the 403is ice cream. It’s this extra thing, right? But if you get a match, it truly is part of your compensation package.
[00:10:55] Joe: And I think one of the first things we need to realize, that if the company matches up to 8%, and I only put in 4% into my 401, I just gave myself a pay cut, and I think we need to look at it as a pay cut if we’re not taking the match.
[00:11:12] OG: Yeah. I mean, obviously the money that the company is contributing on your behalf, uh, you wanna take full advantage of.
[00:11:18] OG: Uh, you could think of it as like compensation. I think about it like return on investment. So if you’reโฆ You said 8%, and there’s not a lot of 8% matches out there, but let’s say 3. If your company matches the f- you know, dollar for dollar on the first 3, or dollar for dollar on the first 3 and 50 cents on the next three, that’s very common, something like that, you’re getting 100% return on your investment.
[00:11:40] OG: If you make $100,000 and you put in 3,000, you get a $3,000 return, right? That’s a free three grand. You look at it as three grand of comp. You’re saying you don’t make 100, you make 103. You know, you gotta opt into that other 3,000. I think about it, like from an investment standpoint, when people are striving so much for the- Seven
[00:12:01] OG: you know, latest and greatest thing, right? And it’s like, “Oh, I gotta get in this IPO,” or, “I’ve gotta do these complicated option trades because I read about it on Reddit,” and like all these things. And it’s like, well, I got a free 100% return right here. Anybody want this one? Or a free 50% return if you get a 50 cent match or 50% match, you know?
[00:12:20] OG: So if you have the ability to do this, this would be a fun exercise to do. If you have the ability to take a look at someone’s 401statement who is much more your senior, right? So, you know, mom and dad, right? You’re, you’re 25, your dad’s 60 and about to retire. Go, “Hey, can I dive into your 401statement?”
[00:12:43] OG: You’ll find a couple of really interesting things. Number one, the balance compared to the contributions. You know, if dad’s worked at the same company, mom’s worked at the same company a long time. The, the amount of money that you put in versus the amount of money that it’s worth is profoundly different.
[00:12:58] OG: So that light bulb- Hmm โฆ should go off. The second thing is, is when you look at the different contribution sources, you’ll see like, you know, dad put in 182,000, the company put in 182,000, and it’s worth 1.6 million. And so it’s not even just the like, you know, 360 went in to get to 1.6, it’s the fact that 180 went in to get to 1.6, because you get that free other 180,000.
[00:13:27] OG: And, you know, whether you look at investment return or you look at it as compensation, I think all of us in, you know, at the end of our working careers, if, if they said, “Hey, by the way, you could go back in time, and we’ll give you a $300,000 pay raise throughout your lifetime-“
[00:13:41] Doug: Yeah “โฆ
[00:13:41] OG: would you wanna take it?”
[00:13:43] OG: You’d be like, “Yeah, bro.” Yeah. “Of course I do.” Oh, but the catch is it’s got, you gotta go in your savings account instead. It’s like, whatever, I don’t care. It’s like free money, right? I’ll take it.
[00:13:53] Doug: Right.
[00:13:53] Joe: I think about the inverse of that, OG, which is have either of you guys done that, um, uh, every once in a while online this appears, how much money you made over your lifetime versus how much you actually kept?
[00:14:06] OG: Is, isn’t that called doing your taxes every year?
[00:14:08] Doug: I, yeah, I scroll past those as fast as possible.
[00:14:12] OG: No, I’m the same way. I’ve got QuickBooks data on, on the planning firm since probably 2009 or ’10, and, uh, you do not wanna run a since all time. That is eye-opening- โฆ and discouraging all at the same time. You’re like, “What the heck have I been doing?”
[00:14:28] OG: You know?
[00:14:29] Joe: Well, and
[00:14:29] OG: when you- Even if you’re doing it right, it feels bad. Do it on Monarch, right? Just re- Right โฆ just, just go on Monarch and change the, change the heading from being year to date or last 12 months to all time, and go look at how much money you’ve made.
[00:14:40] Joe: If you wanna feel bad about yourself, if you wanna start a drinking habit, go do that.
[00:14:45] Joe: You, you know what’sโฆ You, you know what, by the way, and I didn’t mean to imply, if somebody asks you online, “How much money have you made your entire career?” Do not do that online. Like, do not. No. Do it in a, do it in the privacy of- You
[00:14:56] Doug: know,
[00:14:56] Joe: the- โฆ your Monarch or the FieldKit wherever โฆ
[00:14:58] Doug: that, Social Security’s website will do that for you, too, as well.
[00:15:01] Joe: It is interesting because when you think about this, OG, you know, when you talk about do you want a $300,000 raise, the question of how much money have I kept, which is the true mission to get where you wanna go, that 401match can be a big piece of it, and just putting money away in the 401. And so not just having it be compensation or 100% free return or 50% free return, the fact that this is helping us build that delta between the amount of money we make and the amount of money that we keep.
[00:15:33] Joe: So let’s look at compensation packages. You mentioned a game, OG. Doug, let’s play a game to kind of kick this off. I’m gonna give you three different compensation packages, and just tell me as the everyman on this show, like, how you evaluate these. All right? Mm. So the first one is company A gives you a $90,000 salary, no match.
[00:15:52] Joe: Company B gives you an $84,000 salary, but an 8% match on the 401. Company C gives you an $86,000 salary, so between those two, so we got 90, 84, an 8% match, and now an $86,000 salary, but also gives you a pension, makes an HSA contribution on your behalf, and gives you financial planning as part of your compensation package.
[00:16:17] Joe: How do you look at the three of those?
[00:16:19] Doug: Interesting. Well, Iโฆ You didn’t specify w- some of the, the finances around the pension piece of it, but I immediately discount that because I don’t, I don’t like the idea of pensions as much as I like the idea and some of the flexibility that I can have in my own 401and how I can manage that.
[00:16:41] Doug: Is it just
[00:16:41] Joe: that pensions only work if you’re there long term,
[00:16:43] Doug: so- Well, and there’s all of that, right. Yeah. And so there’s, there’s the mechanics of it, you know, how long do you have to be there before it vests? Whereas even if there’s a vestment period in your, in your company match, which is I think unusual, you at least have access to all of the stuff you’re contributing.
[00:16:58] Doug: And 8% on 84 sounds a lot better than A percent you didn’t specify on the pension side of things. HSA is nice. Again, y- you would have to tell me how much is going into that HSA account for me to make a decision, but with just the information you presented, I like the 8% match on 84 better than the other two options.
[00:17:22] Joe: What’s most interesting to me is how if you just said, “We have three jobs, one pays 90, one pays 86, one pays 84,” you immediately go for 90. Yeah. But the fight that you just had was between the 84 and the 86.
[00:17:34] Doug: Yeah. Well, the 90 was out immediately. Yeah. It’s not, it’s not big enough. You know, and, and I was gonna say this earlier, don’t get me wrong, if you work in a larger corporation, mid-size to larger corporation, and it’s review time and y- you know, you’ve just gone through the brain surgery of having to do your own self-review and point out all the stuff you did all year long that your bosses should’ve known about anyways, but you had to go through the whole exercise.
[00:17:59] Doug: You do all of that work, and then you sit down, and they offer you, at best, a 2.5% raise, and you think, “What am I doing here? Theโฆ Like, I’m not even keeping up with inflation.” Don’t forget aboutโฆ It’s, it’s maybe a s- a, a, a weak salve to make yourself feel better, but nonetheless, don’t forget about the increased compensation package for either HSA that they may be contributing to and/or your 401because there is more there in your comp than just that 2.5% raise you just got.
[00:18:33] Joe: I, I remember when, uh, Janice Torres joined us, she talked about the importance of if the company tells you that they can’t give you more money, see if you can negotiate then something on the benefits side, more time off- Yeah โฆ more benefits, maybe the financial planning piece. OG, I wanna turn to you on this for a second.
[00:18:50] Joe: Doug’s analysis there, the pension, you’re, you’re offered one of these unicorns now, one of the few companies out there that might give you a pension, or maybe you’re going to look at evaluating a job with the federal government as an example, who gives a pension, versus what you, you know, mentioned earlier is a very generous match, 8%, huge match, right?
[00:19:08] Joe: Was he right to look at that as a bigger match on the 401beats the pension, or how do you advise people to look at pension versus a nice match?
[00:19:19] OG: Well, just on a sheer principle, I tend to disagree with everything Doug says. So, um- โฆ just toโฆ
[00:19:26] Doug: Even when he’s right, I’m gonna find a wrinkle.
[00:19:28] OG: I’m gonna find something to do that he did wrong.
[00:19:32] OG: Y- look, here’s the thing with pensions or the concern with them. Um, uh, uh, let me back up. A pension is, uh, an obligation by an organization to pay you a stream of income for a period of time, right? And so depending on how old you are when you start working will depend on how much money they’re putting into that account on your behalf, right?
[00:19:54] OG: Because if you’re 22 years old and they say, “Well, if you work here for, you know, our, our retirement plan for you, our pension plan is you’re 22, but you can retire after you’ve worked here for 25 years or reach age 57
[00:20:11] Joe: Okay.
[00:20:11] OG: Well, what does that say? If you’re 22, you got 25 years to go. How much money do they have to put away for a 22-year-old 25 years from now?
[00:20:19] OG: Very little, right? It’s not a lot of money to do. However, if you retire 57, they’ve gotta, like, factor in that you’re gonna live for 30 years, right? So that’s a big benefit w- when you get there. So if you’ve, if you’ve been working for a while i- in that system, it compounds to be worth more and more and more money.
[00:20:39] OG: I had a client years ago that worked at a big company that had a pension, and she was considering transitioning to, uh, a new company with profoundly higher comp, but no pension. So same 401match, that was a wash, and the question basically was, “I’ve got 10 years left in my working career. If I work at company A, where I am right now, I know, you know, here’s what my comp will likely be, and here’s the contributions to my pension, here’s what I can forecast,” ’cause you can go online and type that stuff in the system, right?
[00:21:09] OG: “What do you think my pension will be at 55 when I retire if I keep working here?” And it will give you some calculation. So you could figure out what that was. And as,
[00:21:16] Joe: and by the way, as an aside, if that’s on a pension, that’s gonna be a much more reliable number than some of these calculators that say, you know, my 401.
[00:21:24] Joe: It’s gonna be much more difficult to project- Yeah, I mean โฆ what your 401’s gonna be.
[00:21:27] OG: Sure. I, I, I think long-term if you’re using reasonable estimations for contributions and growth rate, you’re gonna be fine there too. But the question was basically, and she asked the right question, “How much more does my pay have to be at the new place to offset the fact that my pay was lower, but I got a, I got 10 years of this huge contributions that’s going into my pension the last 10 years to kind of top me up, basically, and to offset the fact that, you know, my pension now is gonna be flat?”
[00:21:55] OG: Because she still was eligible for it, just wasn’t eligible, you know- Yeah โฆ it wasn’t gonna grow anymore and, you know, whatever the restrictions were, ’cause she didn’t work there. So it was an interesting calculation, but the, the comp difference, I don’t remember it off the top of my head, but I think it was like she was making 150, but to, to go to the new company had to be 225.
[00:22:12] OG: It was a profound difference. And that net after tax difference between the 225 and the f- 150, that was her savings amount. You have to put this away to offset the fact that you’re not getting 10 more years of contr- you, you’re, you’re, you’re, you gotta do your own pension, basically, is what we were trying to calculate at that point.
[00:22:31] OG: It’s not cut and dry like job A, job B. It really does matter, I think, where you fall, you know, in your working career and what you’re leaving on the table from one place to another. If you’re just starting out or something like that, it’s gonna be different. But, um, I mean, big broad brushstroke, I like the idea of being a little bit more in control of it.
[00:22:48] OG: But these days, most pensions do have a cash-out option. They’re just not gonna be a, you know, they’re not gonna look really good until you get to retirement. Because the companies are okay saving the money, they also don’t wanna be in charge of your longevity. Yeah. So a lot of times they’ll say, “Hey, we, you know, we’ll, uh-” Please take it โฆ”make a deal with you.
[00:23:04] OG: Why don’t you, why don’t we just give you $2 million and you just do your own sh-stuff from there?” Instead of us paying you f- you know, six grand a month from now on
[00:23:13] Doug: There were a lot of words there, and I got dizzy in the middle, but I think it all boiled down to Doug was right.
[00:23:20] OG: Okay. As long as you feel that way, that’s the most important thing out of all of this.
[00:23:24] OG: It
[00:23:24] Doug: sure is. As
[00:23:25] Joe: long as he feels good about it.
[00:23:28] OG: Doug associates with being correctly
[00:23:32] Doug: correct. Correctly correct.
[00:23:33] Joe: Guess what happened to me today, Mom? I was, I was correct. I tried to think about five ways to turn a 401into a de facto raise, and I think this is a very simple checklist for beginning the 401, and I wanted to run this by you, OG, to see what you think of these five things.
[00:23:55] Joe: So number one, we already covered. Don’t miss the match. Like, if you’re gonna use the 401, that match is a part of your compensation, so p- and, and to your point, it’s a free return, so take the match whenever possible. There might be times, like you mentioned earlier, Roger mentioned on Friday, when you avoid that on purpose because you have, quote, “bigger fish to fry” like Mom says.
[00:24:15] Joe: But, uh, but take the match besides that. I don’t know
[00:24:17] OG: that I would ever think it would be a good idea to avoid the match.
[00:24:22] Joe: Number two on the list, I love these plans that have the auto increase. And if you have an auto increase that’s available, use that auto increase every year. Even though this isn’t a, quote, “raise,” it’s gonna automatically, OG, make sure that you keep more, right?
[00:24:39] Joe: So even if you have to begin smaller than you thought, man, if I can use these auto increases every year to just notch it up a little bit, I love this idea of auto-escalating my plan.
[00:24:50] OG: Yeah, it’s a great way to get from where you are to maxing it out over a period of time. A lot of times people look at that maximum number and say, “$24,000?
[00:25:00] OG: Like, I can’t save $24,000 in a year.” Like, that’s ridiculous. It’s like, well, probably not day one, but if you increase it by 1% or 2% every six months, I bet you won’t miss it, especially if you get, you get a regular review cadence where you’re getting a pay increase of, even if it’s something, you know, nominal like you mentioned, 2.5%.
[00:25:23] OG: You’re taking a portion of that pay raise every year and saying, “I’m gonna, you know, I’m gonna live on some of this increase, and I’m gonna save some of this increase automatically.” It’s a great way to do it.
[00:25:31] Joe: It’s so cool. Number three on the list. You and I roll our eyes when we see these over-optimizers talk about what’s better, the Roth or the traditional.
[00:25:40] Joe: Like, it isn’t about which one is better, but more about when each one shines. So I think just backing off from which one’s better, I think number three, though, is understanding the difference between the Roth and the traditional. Because I feel like once you just get your arms around, OG, how these two different plans work, it’s gonna be fairly, I don’t wanna say easy, but easier to figure out which one’s probably gonna work better for you and your situation.
[00:26:10] OG: Well, I’ll do one even simpler. Just alternate it year to year. I mean, the goal is to arrive at retirement with flexibility because we can guess all day long. I’ve got a fairly decent educated guess on what I think tax rates are gonna do in the future, but I also am not an elected official, and I’m also not ever gonna be one.
[00:26:30] OG: And who knows what’s gonna happen, right? Uh, there’s a lot that can happen between now and when I start taking money out of my account. What I wanna do is I wanna be in the position where I have money in each one of those buckets, the pre-tax bucket, which is the regular IRA bucket, the r- tax-free bucket, which is the Roth, and the after-tax bucket, which is your traditional brokerage account.
[00:26:51] OG: So I get to choose how I pay taxes in the future. And if they say, “Well, tax rates are this,” I can say, “Oh, well, I’m gonna ch-ch-ch-ch-ch, I’m gonna zhuzh it,” as they say, so that I get my income the way that I want. You know, tax rates are Y, then I can do it a little differently, and I can, I can take advantage of the flexibility.
[00:27:10] OG: There are some reasons to maybe skew one way or the other depending on your income taxes or your tax bracket or, you know, you got kids in college, and, and, you know, it makes more sense to put money in the pre-tax ’cause it doesn’t count against your income. So there’s things that’ll skew your opinion on this one way or the other year to year, but just like any planning, it’s okay to set it and forget it, right?
[00:27:31] OG: You’re 90% of the way there if you click Max out 401k at 22, put in market, do not touch for 50 years. You’re gonna be fine. But if you’re gonna make some changes, evaluate that annually. Say, “What’s coming up in this calendar year that I need to be aware of? What’s coming up in the next couple years that I need to be aware of in terms of our tax strategy?”
[00:27:50] OG: And then adjust from there.
[00:27:52] Doug: I just wanna clarify something. We’ve talked often about the max contribution of 24,000 roughly in 2026. I think it’s 24.5 or something. But that’s only the employee’s contribution, right? It can actually, you can have a lot more go into your, your 401depending on how much your employer is gonna contribute and whether you’re not, you’re at an age where you can do the one-time catch-up.
[00:28:17] Doug: But it’s like 75 or 80 grand or something, actual max for the year. It’s just 24.5 is the employee’s contribution. Is that correct, OG?
[00:28:27] OG: Yes, not including the amount of money that is for old people like you guys that you can put in ’cause you’re significantly- Why? โฆ older. Um- Why? ‘Cause significantly older people can always, you know- ‘Cause they’re old and infirm, and they just need, like, a little extra help basically.
[00:28:42] OG: Like you guys, then yeah, you can do a little bit more.
[00:28:45] Joe: Some of us take triple bypass literally.
[00:28:48] Doug: But I, I guess I brought that up to say it, it also just confirms why you shouldn’t have to- Yeah, you don’t have to
[00:28:52] OG: worry about the math basically.
[00:28:55] Doug: Yeah, but, but do not give up on that max because the max, or excuse me, on the match, the match, because the match is over and above what your contributions are.
[00:29:04] Doug: Oh, I see what you mean. So it really has a-
[00:29:05] Joe: Yeah, you can- โฆ major impact โฆ yeah, if you can shovel in the whole- Yes,
[00:29:08] OG: correct โฆ
[00:29:08] Joe: whole 24/5, do it, and the match is just on- Yes, correct โฆ on top. The compensation, yeah.
[00:29:14] OG: Thanks, Doug. Right. Yep, you’re right.
[00:29:16] Joe: I think number four on this, you know, and, and kind of the Roth versus traditional gets into this.
[00:29:22] Joe: 15 years ago, significantly fewer companies offered the Roth 401option. Now they do. Now you can get a student loan match. Some give you the ability to do mega backdoor Roth, Roth stuff. Someโฆ It’s funny, there’s another investment news account that talks about how these financial wellness programs at work, OG, have recently been proven to increase people’s expected returns on their paycheck and on their investments because they just went to these lunch and learns at work, and yet the number of people that go to these things remains incredibly low.
[00:30:07] Joe: Like, we, we know that it works, we know that it helps us get excited, it helps us stay the course, and yet we don’t do it. But I also think that knowing the full roster of every benefit HR has and then melding the 401into that will give you a raise. So this isn’t just 401by itself. This is how am I using the 401along with the litany of things that the workplace offers.
[00:30:33] OG: Yeah, put it all together. It’s an entire compensation package. Even so much as the amount of money that gets put in on your behalf into Social Security is part of your compensation package. It’s not just the cash. It’s all the other things as well.
[00:30:45] Joe: And I think I have four on there that are things to do.
[00:30:48] Joe: I think the fifth one’s easy because it’s what you don’t do, and this is the one that drove me crazy, OG, when I was an advisor. The number of people that would say, “Well, I buy my company stock, and I know that by the quarter by quarter how we do.” I remember one guy that worked for Home Depot, and he’s like, “I know Home Depot, the heartbeat, and so I’ll load up on Home Depot in the 401and then I will unload it in this month, and then I’ll load up again and then I’ll unload it.”
[00:31:14] Joe: You know what? Pick your plan and stick with it. Stay away from the individual stock. I think truly there’s a percentage of your success in giving yourself a raise, OG, that is just not messing it up. Not, not n- not treating it like it’s a short-term thing. Like, invest like this money’s gonna be there forever and you’re gonna be much better off.
[00:31:36] OG: Yeah, I mean, this is something you should evaluate at open enrollment time. This is something you should evaluate at comp discussion time, annual review, whatever, bonus time. Commit to a plan, stick to it for a period of time, and then reevaluate. This is why planning is super important and not just, and not just going, “Wellโฆ”
[00:31:55] OG: There, there’s two extremes, right? The one extreme is I’m never gonna look at it ever again, and then the other extreme is I’m gonna look at it every single day. You know, it, probably both of those are wrong. Pick a different cadence.
[00:32:05] Joe: I love the idea of the once a year investment policy statement that we’ve talked about in the past, and that, that you talk about maybe there’s a o- once a year meeting with your planner, right?
[00:32:13] Joe: You’re meeting with your financial planner, and take a look at that or have your family once a year meeting, whatever it’s gonna be. Pick, pick one date ahead of time, get it done then. I like ending on this idea of mistakes. After Doug’s trivia question, I wanna go into some of the worst 401mistakes that I found and run those by you guys.
[00:32:35] Joe: But first, at the halfway break, we take a breather, because Doug, you’ve got maybe some water cooler ammunition for our Stackers to impress all their friends.
[00:32:46] Doug: Sure do, Joe. Hey there, Stackers. I’m Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Doug. Today we’re talking about building wealth at work, and what a coincidence, because on this day in 1969, two regular old Joe Lunch Pail types headed off to work to punch the clock just like the rest of us.
[00:33:03] Doug: Yes, Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong had what might be the world’s longest commute that day. They traveled about 240,000 miles, and somehow neither of them complained about gas prices.
[00:33:15] Joe: Or traffic.
[00:33:16] Doug: Yeah, or traffic. Damn it, that other rocket broke down again. So here’s today’s trivia question: what was the name of the lunar module that landed on the moon?
[00:33:28] Doug: I’ll give you a hint. It’s a word in the phrase Joe’s mom uses when she’s passing out after a pretty rowdy night of poker. Speaking of poker, I’ll be right back after I go ask Joe’s mom for my allowance. I’ve been washing windows all weekend, and it’s time for her to pay up
[00:33:56] Doug: Stackers, I’m resident bill collector and guy who’s gonna have to try again to get paid tomorrow, Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Doug. Today’s the anniversary of the day when man first landed on the moon. You know, I mean, if you believe that sort of thing. I’m not saying I don’t, I’m just saying that these lines they used for the iconic moment sure seemed a little like a Hollywood script.
[00:34:19] Doug: In fact, today’s question was: What was the name of the lunar module that landed on the moon? When they landed, the crew radioed, “Houston, the Eagle has landed,” which is quite a coincidence because that’s also what Mom calls me every time I successfully parallel park. Actually, she’s never called me Eagle, but I know she thinks it.
[00:34:39] Doug: And now, two guys thinking about helping you accumulate more in your retirement plans, Joe and OG. You
[00:34:46] Joe: know, I mentioned The Citadel earlier. My, my roommate at The Citadel, one time I came home on a Friday night, and, uh, he is passed out. I had the lower bunk. He’s passed out on the lower bunk, and he wrote a note before he passed out and put it right next to the Wild Turkey that he had apparently been drinking, and it said, “Joe, the Eagle has landed.”
[00:35:09] Joe: And he just landed inโฆ I don’t know how he had the, the force of will to be able to write out the note that the Eagle had landed, but anyway, we ended up switching bunks that night ’cause I don’t think, I don’t think the Eagle was gonna make it another-
[00:35:23] Doug: Did he leave you any presents in your bunk?
[00:35:26] Joe: No.
[00:35:26] Joe: Luckily, luckily no. No, he’s a pretty, pretty good roommate. All right. Let’s get back to our topic, which is, uh, 401, and you know, a lot of this game, OG, as you know, it’s not trying to do the perfect thing, which I think a lot of our money nerds are always trying to do. It’s about not making unforced errors, and I wanna talk about a few of those.
[00:35:48] Joe: I think one of the biggest ones is, and, and man, how many times have we seen this? Cashing out after you change jobs. I’ve got this 401. It’s only got 9 or $10,000 in it. You know what? I got some credit card debt. I’m just gonna go ahead and instead of roll that over or leave it alone, I’m gonna go ahead and pay off that debt.
[00:36:07] OG: Uh, you’re asking whether or not this is a good idea? Of course it’s a terrible idea. I think it helps to do the calculation of what that’s worth in doubles because it puts a little bit more weight on it. I also understand this from a, a here-and-now standpoint because honestly, we did this. Like, there was a time where, uh, when my wife left her job where it was, I don’t remember the dollar amount, but it was like, “This is a blessing because now we can, we can knock out that credit card debt,” or student loan or whatever we used it for.
[00:36:40] OG: Sitting on this side of the table 30 years later, I recognize that was, I should’ve just suffered more in the moment, you know? But I also understand that people don’t generally make bad decisions in the moment that they think they’re making bad decisions on. It’s only in retrospect do you go, “Yeah, I probably should’ve figured out a way to do that a little differently.”
[00:37:02] OG: So I understand why it comes up. I understand why people choose to do it. I wish people wouldn’t because I think it benefits them long term not to, and just, you know, suffer more in the moment and, you know, get that debt paid off or do what you gotta do. But if you can avoid that, you’re gonna be in much better shape.
[00:37:19] OG: I would also add to this one, Joe, and I don’t know if you’re gonna get to this, pardon me if, uh, you do, but if you’re going to move it, if you’re gonna say, “Hey, I changed jobs from one company to another, and I wanna take it from that plan and put it in my IRA,” or, “I wanna take it from that plan and put it in my new company plan,” you have to invest it when you get it there.
[00:37:39] OG: There’s a profound number of times where, and research has shown this, I don’t remember, did we do a story on this some years ago about the percent of rollover 401money that sits in cash per year? Just sitting in cash. It’s like
[00:37:52] Joe: 30%
[00:37:53] OG: or 40% because people think- It’s a
[00:37:55] Joe: monster number โฆ
[00:37:57] OG: I rolled it over, I’m done.
[00:37:58] OG: I did the paperwork, I’m, my job is done. Now Fidelity handles it from there or whatever. You still have to trade it So you’re not done when you move it. You know, you gotta invest it.
[00:38:08] Joe: The next one on my list is, you know, we talked about the sometimes set it and forget it feels like the right thing to do.
[00:38:15] Joe: You mentioned that there’s maybe this intermediate cadence, I like once a year, looking at it. But this idea of never increasing contributions. I’ve seen so many people who go 10 years, they’re like, “Oh, I, uh, didn’t really think about that. I just thought, oh yeah, I’m saving in my 401. I’ve been saving this-” Yeah, I
[00:38:31] OG: do 3%.
[00:38:32] Joe: Yeah. I’ve been doing 3% for the past 10 years. I never raised it. Never increasing contributions, big, big mistake.
[00:38:39] OG: I mean, unless you’re already at the max.
[00:38:41] Joe: I see financial institutions all the time talking about ignoring the fees in your 401. And I’ve seen people go, “Listen, I’m not gonna use my 401because it feels like a high-fee plan.”
[00:38:53] Joe: I don’t know about you, OG, but when I look at, A, the simplicity of investing through work, and B, the either pre-tax nature or automatic Roth nature of the plan, and to Doug’s point earlier, too, the enormous amount of money I can put in there if I want to, I think being overly obsessive about the fees in my 401and using it as some sort of an excuse not to save, I see as a bigger problem than not paying attention to what the fees are.
[00:39:24] OG: I think it’s helpful to do a little bit of dialogue around what we’re talking about here. So when you have a workplace retirement plan, there’s a lot of record-keeping requirements that have to go into that. The– It’s not just simply like a regular brokerage account where you put money in, you can trade investments and whatever.
[00:39:41] OG: There’s a lot of Department of Labor rules specifically around retirement plans, specifically designed for employees so that they don’t get screwed by their employers. And so all of those calculations have to be done on an annual basis, and, and, and file, you know, and reports be filed every year. And like every industry in America, these are consolidating and being bought up by a lot of private equity firms, or at least getting pieces of them in private equity firms.
[00:40:10] OG: And what’s the first thing that happens when PE gets involved? They go, “Well, I got a easy way to make money. We’ll just charge 30% more. Come at me, bro. What do you wanna do? There’s six providers in the country, and, uh, we own three of them. So what do you wanna do?” So there is a lot of costs associated on the back end of running these things.
[00:40:29] OG: When you’re involved in a smallโฆ And, and the costs, I mean, they scale, right? But there’s a minimum cost, right? Like if you say, “I’m Joe Q. Public, I wanna start a company, and I’m gonna start a 401for my few employees,” there’s a startup cost associated with that and an ongoing maintenance cost that’s a base level.
[00:40:45] OG: So there’s two ways you can pay for that. The one way is the employer pays it. They just like literally write a check and say, “How much is it? Okay, it’s $11,000. Here, stroke your check, here you go.” The other way to do it, which is what gets pitched by the salespeople of 401s is they say, “You know what? We’ll just roll all these costs into the plan.
[00:41:02] OG: You know, we’ll just make these investment funds just a skosh more expensive, or we’ll makeโฆ You know, we’ll have a, a participation fee of $5 a month, or we’ll haveโฆ” You know, they can spread it around depending- Fee spaghetti. Yeah, just however theyโฆ ‘Cause, ’cause the guy who’s running the 401gets paid. You could disagree with the amount that they get paid, that’s fine, but the reality is, is like those calculations have to get done.
[00:41:27] OG: I, I’m staring at one right now for our profit sharing for our plan right here. Like it’s a pretty complicated formula to make sure that the employees don’t get screwed by OG. It’s basically like, “What do I wanna do with my 401? I want it to benefit me.” You know, and they’re like, “It can benefit you, but it also has to benefit them in this formula that we think is a fair way to calculate this and based on comp and so on and so forth.”
[00:41:52] OG: So, so somebody has to figure that out and sign off on it. The bigger the plan gets, the more the incremental fees decline, right? So it’s like it gets smaller on a percentage basis. So, you know, if you work for Ford Motor Company, you don’t really notice any fees in your plan because the little teeny-tiny fee that they get on the investment stuff times the fact that it’s got $8 billion in the 401, they’re, the companies are like, “We’re good,” right?
[00:42:17] OG: But if it’s a startup plan or if it’s a new company You know? So your job as an employee, if you are tuned into this, is to say, “How can I help, you know, make this an easier process for our team?” Right? Like, if you look and you say, “Well, I notice, for example, that this is packed with actively traded mutual funds, and I think we could save some costs if we went to ETFs,” go to the board and present that.
[00:42:45] OG: Like, save the areas that you can save, because the reality is, is that at the end of the day, if, if you say, “Well, I’m gonnaโฆ You know, I, I’ll show you. I’m just not gonna save money in my 401,” company ain’t getting screwed, bro. You are.
[00:42:59] Joe: No. Yeah, that’s-
[00:43:00] OG: You know?
[00:43:01] Joe: That’s the part that always makes my head hurt.
[00:43:02] OG: The guy who runs the company, he’s still gonna retire rich. Like, he got it, right? It’s you that’s not gonna have the million bucks in your 401. So if you, if you have a, a voice or you have some knowledge around this or you can seeโฆ You know, you can just say, “Hey, can I dig into this a little bit?” Like, don’t present it as a problem.
[00:43:20] OG: Present the solution, you know? Because at the end of the day, all of these little things that are part of your benefit plan are to benefit you. They were sold to the owner or to the HR people by a group of people who sell this stuff for a living, and they went, “Yeah, I mean, gym membership sounds great.
[00:43:39] OG: Let’s put it in there,” right? But if you’re like, “No, I don’t want a gym membership, man,” take that out. Like we, we all talk. We don’t, we don’t go to the gym. We don’t need that. It’s not convenient for us. Take that out and take that 50 bucks and add it to this instead. Do that as a collection or a collectivism type of solution versus sticking your head in the sand and going, “I’ll show you,” you know?
[00:44:01] OG: As, as- It’s
[00:44:02] Joe: always so frustrating to see.
[00:44:04] OG: There’s, there’s a lot of ways, and honestly, I bet that 95% of small business owners, because, you know, that’s who we’re talking about here, I bet 95% of small business owners have no idea how this stuff is, is charged or paid for or whatever. And the guy who sold the plan just wants to keep the plan.
[00:44:21] OG: So if you go back to him and go, “Hey, you know, we’ve been looking. Th- and we might switch this to a new company, ’cause you guys charge us for this, and this other company’s not gonna char-” Then you go, “Oh, oh, oh. Uh, sort of let me sharpen the pencil here a little bit Oh, well, you know, you know what now? Now that you bring that, we could probably get rid of that little thing right there.
[00:44:41] OG: You know what I mean? It’s- It’s easier to keep a client than it is
[00:44:43] Joe: to get a new one โฆ it’s like we found this new version of this plan that costs less.
[00:44:46] OG: I mean, I had this story one time. You brought it up, so you get story hour with OG. But I had a client that, um-
[00:44:53] Joe: Wait a minute.
[00:44:53] OG: Hold
[00:44:53] Joe: on โฆ was like, “Hey, our plan” Steve, Steve, we need OG story hour music.
[00:44:59] Joe: Ladies and gentlemen, story hour with OG.
[00:45:01] OG: Yes. So I had a client that had a retirement plan that was awful, and, uh, full fees and all that sort of stuff. Go put together a proposal. We got a better plan, and the existing plan guy basically got our plan and was like, “Yeah, we can match all that.” And so they didn’t switch.
[00:45:20] OG: They’re like, “Well, we gotโฆ We don’t have to do anything different. We got your, we got your pricing with this guy’s plan. Like, it’s a great deal.” And honestly, I’m happy with that. Like, obviously, I would’ve preferred them to have us manage it, right? But the next best thing was it saved money for the group.
[00:45:35] OG: So sometimes even just the threat of doing that will magically produce some fee credits along the way. You know, like, “
[00:45:42] Doug: Oh, well, weโฆ Oh, yeah, uh, as a matter
[00:45:43] OG: of fact, you guys did just cross that new break point of $52,811, so, uh, we can go ahead and waive that, uh, 25, uh, basis point fee. Uh, it would’ve happened automatically next quarter anyway, of course.”
[00:45:55] OG: “But, uh, but we’ll, we’ll, we’ll pull it forward right now,” ’cause it’s just easier to service an existing account than it is to get a new one, right? So just
[00:46:04] Joe: don’t co- Just push back. Negotiate. Push back.
[00:46:07] OG: A little bit, right? And recognize that not everybody’s out to screw you. Sure. And you not putting money in your 401does not affect the owner of the company or John Hancock.
[00:46:19] Joe: The
[00:46:19] OG: worst- Like, guess what? The
[00:46:20] Joe: worst
[00:46:20] OG: way to handle that Those guys are still gonna be rich AF.
[00:46:23] Joe: So frustrating. I’ve got a couple more on here. I mean, there’s a couple obvious ones. Rapid fire.
[00:46:28] OG: Let’s do it. Sorry. I, I
[00:46:29] Joe: know
[00:46:29] OG: you wanna go.
[00:46:30] Joe: Yeah. You know what? Two of these I’m, I’m not even gonna ask for comment on.
[00:46:33] Joe: Don’t put 100% in your company stock. You said this one time, OG. You’re like, “Imagine if they just gave this to you as cash.” Is the first thing you’d say to yourself is, “You know what? Let’s put this all in the company I work for.” Like, you you, you wouldn’t. Probably
[00:46:46] OG: not. Yeah.
[00:46:47] Joe: You would not do that. There are other places to borrow from.
[00:46:50] Joe: Don’t borrow from your future to pay for a vacation. Here’s, here’s a big one, though. Never naming a beneficiary. This is, happens all the time, OG, or not only do they not name a beneficiary, they forget to change it after a big life event, and the big one is divorce. They forget to change it. Don’t forget to change the beneficiary.
[00:47:12] OG: I would say to not only not forget to change it, I would also add to that and review it on an annual basis.
[00:47:19] Joe: Part of that meeting.
[00:47:20] OG: Because guess what? It’ll come as a shock to you, but computer systems fail. Companies lose documents. They friggin’ enter it in the wrong thing. They, you know
[00:47:32] Joe: Speaking of that annual meeting, the last one on my list is don’t forget the old 401.
[00:47:37] Joe: T- the number of times you and I have come across orphan 401s that are invested completely randomly the wrong way or sitting in cash. Those should be rolled over to your master IRA, whatever it might be, and get it done right away.
[00:47:52] Doug: The last thing you just said, Joe, about sitting in cash made me think of a slight nuance on when you guys earlier were talking about rollovers from previousโฆ
[00:48:02] Doug: I, I know a lot of young people who feel like they elected for the 401when they started their job and didn’t realize they had to then pick funds-
[00:48:13] Joe: Yeah โฆ
[00:48:13] Doug: for those to go into. So yeah, they see the deduction coming out of their, in their pay stub. They see the deduction going into their 401, but didn’t realize it’s just sitting in cash.
[00:48:25] Joe: I love the honesty some of our financial influencer friends have had around this topic, Doug. It’s kind of brave to say, somebody that has a, a fairly large following and people see them as an expert, to go, “Yeah, I messed this up myself. Like, I totally messed this up.”
[00:48:40] Doug: Well, hold on. Let me be clear. I didn’t mess this up.
[00:48:43] Joe: Oh.
[00:48:43] Doug: Iโฆ No, this wasn’t me.
[00:48:47] Joe: Right.
[00:48:47] Doug: I just, I know people who have.
[00:48:49] Joe: You know a friend. You have a friend.
[00:48:50] Doug: Yes,
[00:48:51] Joe: yes.
[00:48:52] Doug: People- Tell me things โฆ
[00:48:53] Joe: asking for a friend. So I think a lot of people, in wrapping this up, I think a lot of people hear the word 401, 403, 457, whatever plan you have, and they think retirement. But maybe that’s why they don’t get excited because I think we should think about it this way.
[00:49:09] Joe: The 401isn’t something your 65-year-old self gets. It’s really, truly, in a lot of ways, part of today’s paycheck. It’s money your employer’s willing to spend on you, whether it’s them covering part of the plan OG, whether it’s them giving you match, whether it’s them even just making it available. It is money they’re spending on you.
[00:49:28] Joe: The people get most out of their careers aren’t always the ones with the biggest salaries. They’re the people who understand that you have this entire compensation package. So this week, I’ve got some homework for you stackers. Take 10 minutes, log into your retirement plan, read the benefits page, ask HR one question, because the biggest raise that you get might not come from your boss, it might come from you.
[00:49:53] Joe: That brings us to the final segment of the show, the Back Porch. Doug, what’s going on in the SB community?
[00:50:00] Doug: Well, a couple of things that I, I wanna point out. It’s been a while. Uh, we were remiss in not mentioning this before, but Stacker Ashley posted a picture in the basement of her adorable infant-
[00:50:12] Joe: Ho-ho
[00:50:12] Doug: in a Stacking Benjamins onesie. I saw that, I’m like, “I loveโฆ This is one of my favorite things.” I love to see just Stacking Benjamins swag anywhere out on the internet, but, like, go cool places, take your T-shirt with you. Take a picture of you in your shirt on the Great Wall of China or your brand-new Stacker human that you made in a-
[00:50:34] Doug: cool Stacking Benjamins onesie. That’s amazing, and I was super excited to see it. And then I noticed that Ashley pointed out it was a hand-me-down from her first Stacker that she created. Yeah, that’s great, Ashley. Awesome. Really happy that you’ve discovered frugality And, uh, I didn’t wanna buy another onesie.
[00:50:58] Doug: Yeah. And I’m sure your second human that you made won’t mind that their shirt already smells like old barf from their- โฆ older sibling.
[00:51:07] Joe: They shouldโฆ Those middle kids gotta get used to it, the younger
[00:51:10] Doug: sibling- Yeah. Can you just, can you tell? That’s where my tone of voice is coming from. I know. I was the youngest of three.
[00:51:15] Doug: All my clothes smell.
[00:51:16] Joe: Who knew? Who had, who had an idea? It’s weird. He doesn’t live with them forever, and his clothes don’t smell. No. These-
[00:51:22] Doug: No, those, those scars- โฆ that scar tissue is thick.
[00:51:26] Joe: Runs deep. For
[00:51:27] Doug: sure.
[00:51:27] Joe: Stacker Mallory, by the way, did not, uh, post it to the basement, but she did send me a thank you of all the work that you guys do and the show, and also showed off the newest stacker that she and her husband made, and, um, in their onesie as well.
[00:51:45] Joe: So the Stacking Benjamins onesie at the Stacker Supply Store.
[00:51:49] Doug: We’re talking about these babies like they’re like craft projects- โฆ that people do on the weekends. Well, probably part of it on the weekend, but-
[00:51:57] Joe: It, it might be on the weekends.
[00:51:58] Doug: Yeah. Yeah. Could be. Uh, Joe, we’ve also got some meetups going on. I know there’s one coming up maybe on this coming Wednesday in Mankato, Minnesota, the Southern Minnesota group, uh, meeting, uh, July 22nd at 6:30 where they always meet at the Maverick Innovation Gateway.
[00:52:16] Doug: That just soundsโฆ That’s pretty cool, the Maverick Innovation Gateway. So if you’re in the area, go hang out with that group. They’re huge. That group is getting strong and awesomer by the day. Are there any other groups around that I don’t know about that are having meetups?
[00:52:31] Joe: I think the best thing you can do after listening to an episode of your favorite podcast is to put it in motion, and the best way to put it in motion is to surround yourself with other stackers.
[00:52:42] Joe: And so we have these, uh, Benjamins After Dark groups around the country. We have them in Boston, in Mankato, as you mentioned, in the Twin Cities, Minneapolis St. Paul, in Seattle, and in Tucson. The first thing to do is to join the online meetup group. Uh, our leaders post there. There are other cities working on groups.
[00:53:04] Joe: I’ve been doing a lot of traveling, so we’ve kind of hit the pause button for now. But listen, just go find a group of people locally, whether it’s our Benjamins After Dark group or another. Get a, get an accountability buddy. And, you know, the stuff we talk about with the 401, it’s easy to put it off. And as you know, Doug, you’ve been to conferences.
[00:53:20] Joe: OG, you’ve been to conferences. You, you take a lot of notes. You got a bunch of great ideas. Six months go by, and you come across those notes, and you’re like, “I’ve done nothing.” I thought about it
[00:53:30] Doug: Oh, God.
[00:53:30] Joe: It was great. Oh my goodness. I’ve had six months and I’ve done nothing. So, uh, for our groups, it’s stackingbenjamins.com/bad.
[00:53:42] Joe: That’s stackingbenjamins.com/bad to find out our groups and to go join their individual groups. So hope you come out and, uh, find some fellow stackers to hang out with wherever you might be. That’s gonna do it for today. Hey, if you know somebody who’s misusing the 401, not using it right, or has said, “I’m gonna show them.
[00:54:03] Joe: I’m not gonna use my 401,” maybe send them this episode. That would be a great thing because hopefully we can help other people get the gift of, uh, giving themself a raise, which is a great way to, uh, not justโฆ I don’t like the term financial literacy that much. It’s just so, ho, ho, ho, ugh, so boring. But what’s not boring is, hey, to OG’s point, you got $300,000 more.
[00:54:28] Joe: That’s pretty kickass. What else is kickass is that Doug always gives us the top three things we should’ve learned. So Doug, what are they, man?
[00:54:37] Doug: Well, Joe, first, take some advice from Joe and OG. Use your company match to increase your savings faster, and don’t forget features like automatic increases to help you inch your savings up slowly over time.
[00:54:50] Doug: Pause this and verify you’re doing both of those right now. You won’t regret it. Second. Okay, you’re back? Great. Here’s another one. When you’re negotiating your next job, don’t forget to consider things like your 401match and company HSA contributions to evaluate how well you’re being paid. It’s not just about the salary anymore.
[00:55:13] Doug: But the big lesson, don’t tell Joe’s mom that the eagle has landed. She’ll tell you that the eagle lands when she says it lands. So who knows when that’ll happen? She’s persnickety. This show is the property of SP Podcast LLC, copyright 2026, and is created by Joe Saul-Sehy. You’ll find out about our awesome team at stackingbenjamins.com, along with the show notes and how you can find us on YouTube and all the usual social media spots.
[00:55:45] Doug: Come say hello. And oh yeah, before I go, not only should you not take advice from these nerds, don’t take advice from people you don’t know. This show is for entertainment purposes only. Before making any financial decisions, speak with a real financial advisor. I’m Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Doug, and we’ll see you next time back here at the Stacking Benjamins show.
[00:56:58] Joe: I love challenging our stackers to do hard things, and I l- love, love, love, OG, just the story of this Triple Bypass. It’s funny, when you first told us about it, you kinda downplayed it. You go, “Yeah, I’m doing this bike ride thing.” And then in March, I went to an event in Florida where I was speaking, and there were a bunch of stackers there.
[00:57:23] Joe: And, uh, w- one great, great, really cool stacker, actually also a pilot, OG, and, uh, has had a long career in aviation, just shared some really cool airplane stories for another day. But he did the Triple Bypass. And as he was telling me in much more detail about what he did and what you were about to attempt, I went, “Holy crap.”
[00:57:48] Joe: So let’s start here. You said there’s 11,000 feet of elevation gain. You’re going up three mountain passes. But what time did you start?
[00:57:59] OG: So it’s a rolling start. You can start any time from 5:00, roughly 5:00 in the morning until about 8:00. I think they close the starting, uh, line at 8:00 o’clock.
[00:58:08] Joe: Um, it’s- And this is in Colorado?
[00:58:09] OG: Yeah, it goes from Evergreen, Colorado, which is, um, I guess just a little west of Golden. So you’re starting up I-70 basically, just kinda off of I-70. They’ve done it both ways before. They’ve done it from Avon back to Evergreen, and this way was Evergreen to Avon. Maybe that’s how it’s been recently. But yeah, it’s a great event.
[00:58:31] OG: There’s probably m- um, 3,000 or 4,000 people that do it. They have the, the Triple, uh, which is the three mountain passes, and then, uh, they have a Double Bypass also, which is you start a little bit further down. Yeah, so I started right away, right about 5:00 o’clock in the morning or just a little bit after.
[00:58:48] Joe: And, uh-
[00:58:49] OG: Was
[00:58:49] Joe: it dark? It was dark
[00:58:51] OG: Yes, yes, it was dark. Yeah, you go up, um, you start around 75, 7,800 feet, uh, elevation. The first climb goes to just over 11,000. There’s a little bit of a rest area, and then you’re all downhill from there into a small town along I-70 called Idaho Springs. And then you go from Idaho Springs to Loveland Ski Area, which is, as the crow flies, probably, I don’t know, 15 miles, Doug?
[00:59:18] OG: You’re pretty familiar with that area. 20 miles, something like that. Well,
[00:59:20] Doug: I- you, you can’t do it as the crow flies, but yeah-
[00:59:23] OG: Oh, you can’t โฆ you’re probably not too far off. Yeah, yeah, you would run into a mountain. You’d have to be a very high crow.
[00:59:27] Doug: Right.
[00:59:27] OG: But basically, the path follows, roughly, I-70 up the road to, to where the Eisenhower Tunnel is.
[00:59:35] OG: I mean, Loveland Ski Area is not but, I don’t know, a half a mile, maybe a mile from where the-
[00:59:41] Doug: W- โฆ
[00:59:41] OG: where the tunnel starts. Would you say, Doug?
[00:59:43] Doug: No, it’s literally on top of the tunnel.
[00:59:45] OG: Yeah, okay. Yeah. Yeah. It seems really close. I know when you come out the other direction- It’s close โฆ you can see it. So that’s roughly about 20 miles up there, and then, and then you go over Loveland Pass, which is Highway 6, and probably a lot of stackers have driven that before.
[00:59:59] OG: It’s a pretty popular scenic drive up to the pass. So you can either go through Eisenhower Tunnel, you know, bore through the mountain, or you can go up and over, kind of end up s- ostensibly in the same area.
[01:00:12] Joe: And up and over, I’m watching the Tour de France as we speak.
[01:00:15] OG: Yeah.
[01:00:15] Joe: Peeling it off. I’m a little bit behind, but, um, but so you’re going up a series of switchbacks.
[01:00:21] OG: Yeah. In that section it is. There’s four of them. It goes, you know, you go from the ski area to the top, which is probably about 1,500 feet of gain and three and a half miles. Uh, to kind of put this in perspective, by the way, so it took me 11 and a half hours of riding to do this, which is not particularly fast.
[01:00:38] OG: My goal was not to be fast. It was to finish. Uh, the person who finished the fastest, uh, did it in six and a half hours. Also, by the way, he was 52.
[01:00:49] Joe: Wow.
[01:00:49] OG: So I still got a chance. When I’m old like you guys, I might be able to do it. But just for giggles, I put that into Claude, and I was like, “Hey, like, w- you know what?
[01:00:58] OG: I’m watching Tour de France. Like, what, what are we doing? Like, how, what did we do? What are they doing?” And they’re like, “Yeah, they roughly do a triple bypass every day.” Right. You know, some days a little bit more than others, you know- I saw- โฆ
[01:01:09] Joe: depending on- I was watching yesterday, and I saw they had, uh, 10,500 feet of elevation gain, and I was like, “Oh my God.”
[01:01:17] Joe: Yeah. Just on a normal day f- four of the tour. Yeah,
[01:01:21] OG: yeah, they do that, um, you know, certainly not every day, ’cause they spread it out, as you know. Yeah, right. Some days are more sprint days than climbing days, but, um, the miles are about the same. Um, and so I said, “You know, the, the person who finished first did it in six and a half hours, right?
[01:01:34] OG: Like, what would- Tadej Pogaฤar doing it? And they’re like, the ChatGPT is like, “Eh, four and a half, five hours maybe.” Like, you know, he would be a little bit faster on the downhill. You know, like a little bit as in I was going 40, he might go 60, right? Like, like whatever. Scouch. On the uphill I was going six, he would go 26.
[01:01:54] Doug: Unbelievable.
[01:01:55] OG: You know? It’s like, it’s like not even close. But anyways, it was a great event. Um, it was very tiring. You know, if I ever do it again, I learned a bunch about what I would do differently, like where I would try harder, where I would try less hard, you know, that sort of thing. I talked to a bunch of people on the drive home, just kinda recanting this a little bit and, uh, recounting?
[01:02:17] OG: Recounting this a little bit. Uh, recanting would be a difference thing.
[01:02:21] Doug: That would be if you weren’t gonna do it again.
[01:02:24] OG: Recounting it. Uh, you know, when I finished, my wife was like, she, she said she was thinking, “I wonder how, I wonder how Josh is gonna f- like, what’s his demeanor when he comes around the corner?
[01:02:32] OG: Is he just gonna be like, ‘Oh, my God. Like, I just wanna die?'” Or like, what, you know? And I was in great spirit. Obviously, I was tired, but great spirits. Never thought about stopping along the way. Just embrace the suck.
[01:02:44] Joe: Just do it, yeah.
[01:02:45] OG: But it was, it was a good event. I finished with some- something in the tank, which I suppose is a little bit better than finishing with nothing in the tank.
[01:02:53] OG: Um, although it makes you wonder, like-
[01:02:54] Doug: But there were latrines, like, at the end, right? So you could take care of that.
[01:02:57] OG: I could take care of the tank, yeah. Yeah. Um, I, I did f- uh, it makes you wonder, like, where could I have gone a little bit faster, you know? And Joe, I know you know this from, like, running marathons and stuff like that, like, there’s the balance, right, of, like, finish and you go, “Wow, I finished really strong.
[01:03:10] OG: I feel really good.” And then you go, “But I, I guess I could’ve gone faster. Like, where would I have done that?” You know. So that’s, that’s a fun game to play.
[01:03:19] Joe: Well, the game I wanna ask you about is this one. When I watch the Tour and I see these guys mile after mile after- I love how you’re
[01:03:25] OG: comparing me to the Tour de France guys, by the way.
[01:03:26] OG: This is, this is, uh, really great for my ego. Well,
[01:03:29] Joe: you do. I mean, you know, you’ve had one day of it. I’ve never had any of this. And I think about, like, what are the things you think about when you’re running a marathon? I’ve done a lot of that, but these guys, you know, you’re y- like you said, 11 and a half hours.
[01:03:41] Joe: These tour guys on a daily basis are out there for hours and hours and hours, and you’re peddling uphill, your legs are burning, right? And I, and I’m just wondering about minute by minute by minute by minute by minute, w- w- what’s going through your mind? Like, how do you keep yourself on task versus what I would do?
[01:04:01] Joe: Because I know even running a marathon, I have to continually recheck my brain, which is going, “You know, you could pull over right here. You could, nobody would care if you just pulled over right here.” Mm-hmm. And you go, “Nope, can’t do that.” But you try to keep your mind occupied. How do you occupy your mind going up these three mountains?
[01:04:18] OG: Well, the first one was fine. There was nothing, you know, uh, there’s a lot of people around and, you know, whatever.
[01:04:25] Joe: Derek, the stacker that I was talking to, said the first mountain for him, he thought was the hardest mountain.
[01:04:31] OG: No, not even close. No, the first one was fine, but it depends on which way he did it.
[01:04:36] OG: Going from Vail- Okay โฆ backward would be probably worse.
[01:04:38] Joe: Yeah, I don’t know which way he did.
[01:04:40] OG: The first one was fine. The third one was fine because I had stayed in Frisco for two weeks, so I had done mile 70 to mile 95, like, three times. I had ridden that route a bunch, and so I was very familiar with it. I was familiar with what to expect, and there is obviously the psychological piece, as you know, Joe.
[01:04:59] OG: When you’re, like, on the final little bit and you’re like, “I have three miles to go,” like- When you’re h- horse to the
[01:05:03] Joe: barn
[01:05:04] OG: I can do anything, you know Mm-hmm โฆ and you can see it, or you can hear the music, or you’re like, “Whatever, I can, I can do anything for the next, you know, 30 minutes.” Yeah. The hardest part was decidedly mile 43 to 60, which is coming up to Loveland and then going over Loveland Pass.
[01:05:21] OG: I never had the mi- the, the, like, “This is stupid. I shouldn’t be doing it.” Like, I never thought that. I did, however, g- uh, in the Loveland section, it’s four switchbacks, and in my mind, each one was a mile. In reality, and I got real surgical about this, it’s about 4,500 feet of linear feet traveled. So in my mind, I was like, “Okay, each pedal stroke, like, how many, how many feet am I making?
[01:05:45] OG: Like, how many times do I have to pedal?” That’s funny. That’s what I do, is I do the math piece. So I did the first segment, and then turned the corner, and I was like, “Okay, I’m gonna stop for a second, catch my breath.” My legs never hurt. If you’re doing, if you’re doing cycling right, your legs shouldn’t hurt that much.
[01:05:59] OG: It should be more s- cardio. But, um, I stopped and I was like, “Okay, maybe the first segment’s, like, a mile and a half, and really I only have, like, two m- I mean, like, a mile and a half to go.” No, it wasn’t. It was, like, 2.9 to go, you know, on my little computer. I’m like, “Oh, crap.” So after it got to 1.9, I started thinking in quarter-mile increments because each hundredth of a mile is maybe roughly 50-odd feet.
[01:06:22] OG: So when I would see the thing tick down by a hundredth of a mile, I would go, “Okay, I just made it 50 feet. Like, I can do another 50. I can do that again. That was easy.” So when I stopped at 1.9 miles to go to catch my breath, ’cause that’s the other piece of it. It’s not just uphill, but it’s uphill at altitude, right?
[01:06:42] OG: So you’re at, like, 12,000 feet. Yeah. It’s a little different. I said, “Okay, I’m gonna make it to 1.65 miles.” Like, two 20- it’s a quarter of a mile from here. I can do a quarter of a mile. And I got to 1.65, I’m like, “I can do 1.64. I can do 1.63.” And when I got to 1.63, I was like, “I can do 1.60.” And at 1.61, I was like, “No, I can’t.”
[01:07:02] OG: And so I stopped. I’m like, “All right, now I can do, like, 1.25.” Right? And then, like, I had all these little checkpoints of agreed-upon it’s okay to stop here and catch my breath. That’s how I made it up that hill. And I would go a little bit beyond that, you know, based on how I was feeling. And then I think that I did the last three-quarter of a mile.
[01:07:20] OG: But there was never a spot where I was like, “I’m not gonna do this.” Yeah. It was just like, “I need to stop here for a second and get my heart rate to come back down into the 140s, and then I will frigging pedal my ass off for another-
[01:07:32] Joe: Keep going โฆ
[01:07:32] OG: 90 seconds and see where I end up.
[01:07:35] Joe: It’s funny, the similarity there, because when I do marathons, I do the math in my head.
[01:07:39] Joe: I’m continually doing math in my head, and it’s amazing how tired I am, and I can keep my brain occupied forever because my ability to do math is so awful. Like t- 15 miles in, my ability to do math is just horrible. And then I’m like, “Wait a minute, was that right? What, what was that number? Uh, hold on.”
[01:07:55] Joe: Before I’d know it, you know, time is, time has gone by. Yeah. I
[01:07:58] OG: mean, basically, it’s like skiing with Doug. You just basically watch all the fast people go downhill, and then you go, “I’ll catch them eventually.” And then you catch them, and you’re like, “Hey, I’m gonna take a break. Is it cool?” Yeah. And then Doug goes- At the end of the day, you’ve been far
[01:08:08] OG: “I’ve been frigging breaking, I’ve been, I’ve been s- waiting for you for 25 minutes, so I’m, I, I’m not tired anymore. I’m gonna go.” And so, like, when I go to take a break, Doug’s already had a break, and off he goes again, so.
[01:08:20] Joe: Is this like you on that 5K where you waited for Mrs. OG toward the finish line?
[01:08:24] OG: You know, it’s funny ’cause I told that story to my friends who were there, and I feel like it happened to me again, but it happened, like, 60 miles earlier.
[01:08:31] OG: I waited for my friend for almost an hour at the Loveland Ski Area because I l- I looked on the map and I was like, “Oh, he’s, like, only two and a half miles away.” Well, you know, at five miles an hour, that’s 30 minutes. Mm-hmm. And then when he got there, he was like, “I need to take a break.” And then so we started to go, but he’s a stronger cyclist than me by a lot.
[01:08:50] OG: And so he was like, “All right, I’ll see you at the top.” And I’m like, “Oh, . I should’ve just kept going- โฆ and I would’ve stayed ahead of him.” And, and so we get to the- Bunker โฆ you know, we get to the finish. He’s changed and showered, and they’re cheering, and I’m like-
[01:09:02] Joe: Oh.
[01:09:03] OG: You know. But, um, no, it was a great event.
[01:09:06] OG: It’s well, it’s well-attended. It’s well-supported across the entire event. You know, the biggest thing for me was this, and this was not a stated goal, but it was, it was– I’m glad it happened the way it did because, um, so Lyssa and Caroline came out. They were on their way to Michigan, so they were gonna come to the race for a few days and support me, and so they did a bunch of cool stuff, which was fun.
[01:09:28] OG: But as they were staying in Frisco, they came back down the mountain to meet me on one of the, one of the climbs. And, um, they stopped at Loveland, and they’re like, “I think this is where this is.” And they were, like, stopping there looking at it, and, and Lyssa said that sh- she was telling me this story, that she said, um, you know, that she’s like, “Well, I see this road, but that can’t be the road.
[01:09:52] OG: It’s very steep. That can’t be it.” And then it kinda goes this way, and then she’s like, “No, it’s, it’s– it must not be that because look how high that is.” And then she was, like, looking and she goes, “Wait, are those cyclists up there?” And so the girls together, I think– And I asked my daughter this. I was like, “Did you actually think I was gonna get it done?”
[01:10:13] OG: And she was like– She kinda gave me the look like Kinda like the, “I love you, Dad, but that looks pretty crazy, so I wouldn’t have faulted you if you didn’t,” you know? And, and I, I don’t know if Alyssa thought I was gonna get it done or if she didn’t, but it was more interesting to me to see the, uh, effect, or at least my perceive- my, my perception of the effect on my daughter, who’s 10, seeing how intense that was or how it looked, how intense it was, right?
[01:10:44] OG: Like the, the slope of the road’s like this, and, you know, the mountain’s way up over there, and like, you see a little teeny-tiny cyclist way at the top, and thinking in her head, like, “There’s no frigging way my dad’s doing that. I love him, but he is fat-” “โฆ and there’s no way that he is pedaling his fat ass up
[01:11:02] Doug: that mountain.”
[01:11:02] Doug: I see him. How? With a case of
[01:11:03] OG: Doritos? Yeah. Like, this is the dude that, like, chain-smokes cigars- โฆ you know, and drinks bourbon by the pool. Like, uh, he’s not doing that. And then I did it, and you know, I- there’s never a doubt in my mind, but I’m happy to have done it and have my daughter witness that because I think maybe in my own mind, she got to see, like, okay, she put it all together.
[01:11:26] OG: Like, Father’s Day this year, Father’s Day brunch, I didn’t go to because I was training, so they went to Father’s Day brunch without the father. Be- and they were like- Awkward โฆ “Where?” They’re like, “Hi, every- who, what, did Dad-” Who we celebrating? “โฆ is he parking the car? Like, what?” Yeah. They’re like, “Oh yeah, he’s not coming.
[01:11:46] OG: We’re just here for the brunch.” You know, so she saw all of the sacrifice and the training and the time, and the fact that it was okay to miss some things and it is okay to do, it’s okay to do you, basically, right? Like, “Hey, I’ve got this priority that is hard, and I need to be in shape for,” and then to see the outcome of it, and then kinda witness how intense it was, or at least in her mind, like, whatever, and then to see the finish.
[01:12:11] OG: I think, I, my hope is, is that the byproduct of this is that she, she recognized, like, training, doing hard stuff, it’s okay to, you know, prioritize things that are important to you, and if you put as much effort into it as you can, you’re not gonna be first. I wasn’t first by a mile, right? But I finished. I was successful.
[01:12:33] OG: I was happy about it, you know, so maybe that has some long-lasting benefit for her, but I’m, I’m glad that, I’m glad that she got to stop there and see that hill because I think even my wife was like, “Yeah, we might, we might just park the car here just in case, just to see-” “โฆ see if we need to-” Is there ambulance service
[01:12:49] Joe: here?
[01:12:50] OG: pick this guy up right here.” Like, I mean, halfway’s not bad, right? I mean, that’s pretty good. 50 miles is a, is a long bike ride. Right. I mean, hell, that’s a really long time, so. Hey, you made
[01:13:00] Joe: it the first 400 yards
[01:13:03] OG: Yeah. So, um, it was a great event. Glad I did it, and, um, you know, we’ll see, we’ll see what happens in the future.
[01:13:08] OG: Maybe, maybe we should get all the stackers together, and then you guys can do it too. Sounds great, right? We could allโฆ You d- Doug, you get your, likeโฆ Don’t you have one of those ones with the bell? Da-ding, da-ding, da-ding. I
[01:13:18] Doug: do. My basket might hold enough, uh, liquid, like-
[01:13:22] OG: No โฆ refreshment โฆ they, they give it to you along the way.
[01:13:24] OG: You know, you just-
[01:13:24] Doug: Oh, I don’t need that โฆ show up. Okay.
[01:13:26] OG: Yeah. Actually- But- โฆ um, um, I know- I
[01:13:28] Joe: got the perfect bike. I got Cheryl’s e-bike. But I don’t even- You know,
[01:13:31] OG: you can use e-bikes, as a matter of fact โฆ but
[01:13:32] Joe: I don’t even really need to pedal. I can ride it like a motorcycle and justโฆ
[01:13:36] OG: Yeah, you can do a, um, you can do a class one e-bike, which is interesting.
[01:13:40] OG: Um, this actually sounds like, uh, the race that we should do, fellas. Um, it’s in Illinois. It’s called the Tour de Donut. And- Oh. It’s a annual, uh, bike race in Illinois. Uh, you ride 34 miles, so even the most- Okay โฆ untrained person- Yeah โฆ could do that. I mean, your butt would hurt. Each donut eaten takes five minutes off your total time.
[01:14:05] Doug: Oh. I would go back in time.
[01:14:10] OG: You stop twice to eat donuts, with each donut knocking five minutes off your time. The winner, Colin, ate 16 donuts and finished with an adjusted winning time of 43 minutes.
[01:14:23] Joe: When is this? What month is this?
[01:14:25] OG: It doesn’t say, but it also says, uh, if you don’t wanna do the 34-miler, you can do a 12-miler with one donut stop. I feel like signing us all up for that just, just ’cause I think that would be a frigging racket. Uh, we could all haveโฆ You know, I would just wanna see you guys in those, those cycling bibs and those- I
[01:14:43] Doug: was gonna ask, do we get to see pictures of you in your sexy outfit?
[01:14:47] OG: Yeah, they’re all over the Gram, bro. You didn’t, you didn’t catch any of that on the Gram?
[01:14:50] Doug: No, I don’t do the Gram.
[01:14:52] OG: Yeah, that’s too bad. I- Oh, boy โฆ got a whole, whole reel all ready.
[01:14:56] Doug: I do Facebook.
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